Carlton Hazlewood, the Burzynski Research Institute IRB chairman - what ARE the links between him and Stanislaw Burzynski?

The well-known blogger and cancer surgeon & scientist Orac has written another great blog examining aspects of the failures of the Burzynksi Research Institute (BRI) Institutional Review Board (IRB), linking to recently discovered letters relating to FDA inspections. It brings into question the entire relationship between Dr. Burzynski and Carlton F. Hazlewood

Carlton Hazlewood may be an even more "interesting" character than even the FDA letters appear to make him. A study of Burzynski's CV (available to download from the Burzynski Clinic website http://www.burzynskiclinic.com/sr-burzynski-md-phd.html shows that his very first mention of the word "antineoplaston" appears in a paper published in 1976 (listed as number 140 in the CV) in a journal listed (by abbreviation) as Physiol Chem Phys - this turns out be be "Physiological Chemistry and Physics". This has now morphed into "Physiological Chemistry and Physics and Medical NMR" in 1982. http://www.physiologicalchemistryandphysics.com/

Sadly, the online archive of this journal is incomplete, with only 2 articles from 1976. PubMed has no abstract available  

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1013179

Oh well! However, further information reveals on the journal's website that its "Editorial College"  has listed among its members, a certain Carlton F. Hazlewood 

http://www.physiologicalchemistryandphysics.com/editorial.htm

Bottom left-hand corner. Hmm! It also turns out that Hazlewood was employed by Baylor College of Medicine from 1965 until 1997.

http://www.forbes.com/profile/carlton-hazlewood/

When Burzynski first worked in the US, he worked at - Baylor College of Medicine - from 1970 to 1977. This, of course, may be pure coincidence and I don't know how long Hazlewood has been on that journal's Editorial College. Burzynski does, however, have 5 other publications in that journal between 1973 and 1977.

Also of note is the name of the journal's Chief Editor, Gilbert Ling. He has a number of book titles listed on Amazon, but doesn't have a Wikipedia entry. Googling his name, you can find his own website - the contents seem a little "odd" to me (are those ducks I can hear?). Going further down the list takes you to this

http://gerson-research.org/docs/HildenbrandGLG-1979-1/index.html

Yes - it's a Gerson website. Oh dear! Searching that page you find several mentions of Ling and - Carlton Hazlewood. It appears that the article is a re-publication of an article published in something called "The Healing Journal". The title itself raises a red flag. It's certainly not PubMed listed. Googling it takes you to http://www.thehealingjournal.com/

This is going from bad to worse - the red flags are waving so much you could start a wind farm! The article is dated 1979 and seems to be too old for the archive on the website. 

Much is made in the article of a connection between Ling, Hazlewood and Raymond Vahan Damadian, inventor of the MRI scanner. Curiously, there seems to be no mention of Ling or Hazlewood on Damadian's Wikipedia page or on that about the MRI scanner. Perhaps someone can enlighten readers about the veracity of this claimed connection? It seems that the article's author, Gar Hildenbrand, (more red flags - Gerson!) thinks that MRI will prove that Ling's theories about cell structure, which seem to be at odds with the work of other scientists in the field of cellular structure, e.g sodium channels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_channel

Gar Hildenbrand is, it seems, a former Executive Director of the Gerson Institute.

I have no idea whether Ling is or was a genuine cell biology researcher who may have gone bad (there do seem to be several articles authored by him listed on PubMed) or is simply having his name taken in vain by cranks. It's not my field - if someome knows the real story could they please provide a link or reference. However, the article on that Gerson website claims that "Gilbert N. Ling may very likely be known by future generations of scientists as the Father of Cellular Biology". Really? Surely such an achievement would've merited a Wikipedia entry..... 

Maybe I'm simply making too much of connections by association. Maybe someone in the USA knows more or can find out more about Carlton Hazlewood. There is some more stuff on Google, but I'm not sure how relevant it is to this subject. 

Another letter has just emerged from the FDA to Hazlewood dated 14th December 2009 shows that the Burzynski Research Institute hadn't been keeping up with its obligations and had failed to register "at a site maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services".

http://www.circare.org/info/bri/fda_to_bri_undated.pdf

It's still not registered, it seems http://ohrp.cit.nih.gov/search/irbsearch.aspx?styp=bsc

One has to wonder if the relationship between Burzynski and Hazlewood is more complex than it appears to be based just on the IRB stuff. 

 

Welsh Intensive Care Society Summer Meeting 2012

<script src="http://storify.com/drpaulmorgan/welsh-intensive-care-society-summer-meeting-2012.js"></script><noscript>[View the story "Welsh Intensive Care Society Summer Meeting 2012" on Storify]</noscript>

Another family seeking a miracle, but why won't the Independent (Ireland) publish my comment?

Recently, I was made aware through Twitter that another family were looking for a miracle cure for their sick child. The story was published in the Ireland version of "The Independent"

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/us-treatment-hope-for-little-alexandra-3168094.html

Now, as many skeptics have pointed out previously, the desperation of families in such a horrible situation is awful and yet understandable. Parents will do just about anything to give their children health and long life, so when you have a sick child it is completely understandable that when given the awful news that your child is dying of cancer (or any other disease, for that matter), you will seek out anything that offers hope of life prolongation or even a cure. These days, for better or worse, the Internet gives access to far more information than was available 20 years ago. The problem is that no matter how much genuine information is posted by genuine cancer doctors and scientists, there is just as much, if not more, useless information put out there by quacks, charlatans and those who have left behind science and medicine to feather their own nests by promoting their own half-baked, debunked therapies. So many such "therapies" have failed when subjected to appropriate scientific scrutiny, for example Laetrile, homeopathy. A good summary is provided at http://www.cancertreatmentwatch.org/reg/125.shtml but even that barely scratches the surface of some of the biggest worthless treatments out there. Have a rummage around on http://whatstheharm.net/ to see the problems encountered with the likes of homeopathy.

One such treatment which has failed to show any evidence of having anything to offer is that offered by the Burzynski Clinic in Houston, Texas, run by one Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski. There are multiple blogs pointing to the failure of Burzynski to publish anything of any value in showing that his "antineoplaston" therapy has any proven benefit in any form of cancer. It seems that Dr. Burzynski once had a theory that patients with cancer were failing to secrete into their urine various chemicals that patients without cancer were. He therefore sought to give substances - which he termed "antineoplastons" to patients with various forms of cancer on the premise that replacing these missing substances would somehow cure their cancers. According to his CV, published on the Burzynski Clinic website, http://www.burzynskiclinic.com/sr-burzynski-md-phd.html , he has been researching these compounds since 1976. Simple mathematics therefore gives a period of approximately 37 years of research into "antineoplastons".

So, when I see articles referring to The Burzynski Clinic providing "pioneering" or "groundbreaking" or indeed any other adjective that might suggest in some way that "antineoplastons" may have an as-yet undiscovered potential for treating or curing cancer, my blood runs cold. Such terms have been frequently used by mainstream media sources and have been rightly criticised for being examples of lazy journalism. Sadly, yet predictably, the cancer sufferers highlighted in such stories have a tendency to die from their cancers in the way that the doctors said they would - in other words, the original prognoses turned out to be reasonably accurate and nothing that the treatment provided the Burzynski Clinic made any difference. Dr. Burzynski has been soundly criticised for systematic failure to complete clinical trials and publish their results. According to the Clinical Trials database (a service of the US National Institutes for Health), Dr. Burzynski has 61 trials registered.http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=burzynski  Of those trials, only one - yes ONE - trial is recorded as completed in possibly 2009 but the results are not published anywhere. All bar one of the other registered trials are listed as status "Unknown", "Withdrawn" or "Terminated". The Burzynski trolls who loiter on Twitter looking to spread the word of the "miracles" performed by the Burzynski Clinic conveniently ignore this abject failure to publish while banging on about the single registered Phase 3 trial. Yes, you read that correctly - Dr. Burzynski has apparently never conducted a Phase 3 trial of his "antineoplastons". However, he does have permission for a Phase 3 trial listed for the treatment of optic nerve glioma. It has been pointed out by cancer scientists on Twitter that this particular tumour has a 90% long-term survival rate with conventional cancer therapies.

http://www.pedsoncologyeducation.com/OpticPathwayGliomaPrognosis.asp

The value of studying a "new" therapy for this tumour type is therefore questionable. According to the Clinical Trials database, the Phase 3 Burzynski trial for this tumour was registered in December 2010 and was due to start recruiting in December 2011. There's no further information as to the status of this study, but not even the trolls seem to know anything about this trial starting. Some skeptics are suggesting it's just an elaborate marketing ploy. As if.........

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01260103?term=burzynski&rank=61

The Burzynski Clinic website implies that Dr. Burzynski has an extensive list of publications. http://www.burzynskiclinic.com/publications.html However, even just a preliminary analysis of this list shows that many of these publications are just conference poster abstracts, generally regarded as being of very low value as posters are not subjected to a peer-review process. A more accurate state of Dr. Burzynksi's publications is given by the PubMed database. A search for "Burzynski antineoplaston" reveals just 37 publications in total and none since 2006.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=burzynski%20antineoplaston  Even what has been published is of questionable value. A summary of this is given by Jen McCreight in her blog http://freethoughtblogs.com/blaghag/2011/11/a-look-at-the-burzynski-clinics-publications/ Essentially, there is no published evidence of any benefit from Dr. Burzynski's antineoplaston therapy. Late in 2011, the Burzynski Clinic really put it's collective foot in it by employing someone called Marc Stephens to clean up the Internet by getting bad news stories about Burzynski and the clinic removed. He set about harassing various bloggers who had posted stories showing Burzynski and the clinic in an adverse light by pretending to be a lawyer and threatening to issue libel proceedings against them. Needless to say, the reaction on the Internet to such threats was swift and damning, releasing a Streisand Effect. The clinic later issued a statement saying that Stephens had been dismissed but that they were still considering issuing proceedings against the bloggers.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzijOpjuex1bMjE4N2JjOGItZGFlOS00NDE0LTk2YzktMThkYjFiOTU2YjNl/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

To date, over 8 months later - no law suits. Hmm! Of course, the best defence in a defamation case is to show that what was said or written is true..... It's turned out that Stephens is not a lawyer - at the very least he's not registered as such in either Texas or in his home state of California. In several US states it's a criminal offence to pretend to be a lawyer. Perhaps Dr. Burzynski's real lawyers have been too busy with his ongoing legal battle with the Texas Medical Board and with a former patient suing him.

http://reg.tmb.state.tx.us/TMBPublicWebSite/BoardOrders/ViewBoardOrders.aspx?ID_NUM=49851

http://www.hcdistrictclerk.com/edocs/public/CaseDetails.aspx?Get=mrq5CdIKQl7cEbvbErD5t7rNS1R7XxgRz81DDtWr5vexteWmqrSe/4oHf8IMvoVJ8hmVyNS1HCqT2VdYM9PGmgbiimoTXAiRz5f75gE/GFg=

A great list of all the blogs and news stories on Burzynski is given here:-

http://josephinejones.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/burzynski-blogs-my-master-list/

It was further discovered that Marc Stephens is a web developer and responsible for "Marketing & Sponsorship" for the Burzynski Patient Group, a "support group" for raising "public awareness of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski's breakthrough treatment for cancer using Antineoplastons and gene-targeted therapy" and to "provide useful information and emotional support to cancer patients and their families".

http://bhttp://burzynskipatientgroup.org/contact-us

http://burzynskipatientgroup.org/about-us

The reliability of the information presented on this site has also been brought into question by skeptical bloggers, as it seems that several of the patients listed there have subsequently died from their cancers.

So, on Saturday, 14th July 2012 the following story (apologies for duplication of the link from the top of this article) appeared in the Irish edition of "The Independent" 

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/us-treatment-hope-for-little-alexandra-3168094.html

I don't know if this was just the website or in the printed edition as I'm not in Ireland. When it first appeared there was the opportunity to post comments. I therefore wrote the following comment:-

 

While it is desperately sad for the child and her parents, the Burzynski Clinic offers nothing but false hope and charges vast sums of money for no benefit. Burzynski has been "researching" his "antineoplaston" therapy since 1976 but is yet to publish ANY evidence of benefit for any type of cancer. The overwhelming majority of doctors and cancer scientists would describe this form of so-called "alternative" medicine as not so much unproven but - given the length of research time to date - disproven.

I cannot blame the parents for wanting to explore every avenue to find a cure for their child's cancer. However, Burzynski offers nothing but financial pain and misery. There are many useful resources available on the Internet which document the failings of Burzynski to deliver anything of any value.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/stanislaw-burzynski-antineoplas...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/stanislaw-burzynskis-personaliz...

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/05/05/harnessing-peoples-good-to-pay-f...

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/12/05/personalized-gene-targeted-cance...

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/12/12/what-dr-stanislaw-burzynski-does...

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2012/03/the-burzynski-millions.html

http://bioworld.blogs.bioworld.com/2011/12/05/burzynski-institute-patient-exp...

http://josephinejones.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/burzynski-blogs-my-master-list/

I don't want to come across as the bad guy here! However, readers should also note that Dr. Burzynski is a convicted fraud and is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Texas Medical Board. Caveat Emptor!"

Given what has been discovered and written about the Burzynski Clinic, I didn't think this was overstating the case, saying anything untrue (and therefore defamatory) or seeking to blame the parents. Upon posting, I received a standard "Your comment is awaiting moderation". Ok, fair enough. It's their website. I waited, but the comment never appeared. On the Sunday, a comment was posted by a Cardinal which also critised the Burzynski Clinic but my comment never appeared. I therefore resubmitted my comment. Today, Monday 15th July, not only has my comment not been posted but the Cardinal's comment has disappeared. Furthermore, there is now no longer an option to post comments on this story. One is left wondering why. In the UK, similar stories led to severe criticism of journalistic standards, most notably in regard to a story published in "The Observer". The failure of journalists to do any proper research into stories such as this about medicine and science only serves to mislead the readers and viewers as to the evidential truth of such stories.

The best advice I can give here is to take stories of "miracle cures" and "groundbreaking research" with an extremely large pinch of salt! If reading about such stories on the Internet, a really useful tool is to use the "Web of Trust" ratings tool http://www.mywot.com/ and to use resources such as http://www.senseaboutscience.org/

America must be so proud (not)

Burzynski and the Illuminati? Err? Where did this one come from?

Homeopathy at Exeter University?

Earlier today, 15th Novemeber 2011, @Blue_Wode tweeted a link to a page on the website of the University of Exeter where the Staff Association is offering a discount for a homeopathy clinic ON IT'S CAMPUS!

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/staffassociation/benefits/homeopathy/

Now, we all know that homeopathy is bunkum, a form of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" - SCAM, for short. I found this particularly surprising, given that the scourge of the homeopaths, Professor Edzard Ernst (@EdzardErnst) had recently "retired" from his post as Professor of Complementary and Alternative Therapy.

I decided to email various people within the University of Exeter to point this out and to ask them to act on this. As a university containing a medical school it really should not be in any way associated with the promotion - inadvertant or otherwise - of quack therapies. The web page makes many false claims of benefit that have typified those made on the websites of homeopaths. The Advertising Standards Authority has been deluged in recent months regarding complaints about homeopathy websites such that it has issued a temporary (hopefully!) moratorium on these complaints so that it can decide how best to deal with them. See http://www.asa.org.uk/Resource-Centre/Hot-Topics/Homeopathy-complaints.aspx for further information on this. This deluge of complaints has been made possible through the work of Simon Perry and his development of the browser plug-in "Fishbarrel" http://adventuresinnonsense.blogspot.com/search?q=fishbarrel

I sent this email at lunchtime to the Occupational Health department, the Chancellor (Floella Benjamin - the former children's TV presenter) and the Vice-Chancellor to ask them to act:-

"You may be aware  that homeopathy is being offered as a "Staff Benefit" by the University of Exeter. The reason I am aware of this is that this information is being spread through social networks by people who have serious concerns about this. It is particularly surprising that this "service" is being offered considering that the University had the only UK professor of "complementary and alternative medicine", the recently retired Edzard Ernst. Professor Ernst is well-known for his research and multiple publications on these "therapies" and has been very critical of homeopathy. The reasons for his criticism of homeopathy are based in the evidence - the evidence base clearly shows that at best homeopathy offers no benefit beyond placebo. To therefore be offering homeopathy as a staff benefit is actually doing the staff of the University of Exeter a great disservice by the promotion - inadvertent or otherwise - of quackery. You also have the Peninsula Medical School within your university, so again anything which promotes pseudoscience and quackery potentially harms the reputation of the University.

Please give serious consideration to withdrawing this so-called benefit and instead promote genuine evidence-based therapies for university staff."

I didn't expect a reply so quickly, but I must give kudos to Serena Horrell, manager of the Occupational Health department for replying within just a few hours:-

"Dear Paul,

I have picked up your email from our generic email account. I think the offer you must be referring to is the one being made by the Staff Association to its members, not one being made by ‘The University’ per se (more staff not being members, than those who are). As far as I am aware, the Occupational Health Service have never offered complimentary therapies (of any kind) and in the four years I have been post, this has remained the case, for the very reason/s you state (i.e. there is no evidence base for their use). 

I suspect the Staff Association see the use of complimentary therapies as something its members might value and are therefore offering these services to any members who might be interested (at a personal cost to each person who avails them self).  I fear there are a number of activities going on, in and around the university, that are neither evidence based nor have an established justification for their use, but, because all of the staff working at the university are adults, I expect they are being left to make their own decisions and judgements on these activities. If you have a real issue with this, you may wish to address the matter with someone representing the Staff Association direct.

Best wishes,

Serena.

Serena HORRELL, Mrs

Occupational Health Manager"

This is somewhat reassuring as it is clear that her department in no way supports or endorses homeopathy. However, the clinic is being held on the University campus and - inadvertantly or otherwise - it gives the impression that the University endorses the use of homeopathy. As suggested in her reply I have replied to Serena and copied it to the Staff Association (and also the Vice-Chancellor):-

"Dear Serena,

Many thanks for your prompt reply. It is extremely reassuring to know that your University does not endorse or directly supply homeopathic “remedies”. It does indeed appear that it is the Staff Association that is promoting homeopathy through a discount scheme. However, the link is readily accessible from the University website http://www.exeter.ac.uk/staffassociation/benefits/homeopathy/

This web page makes it clear that this “therapy” is provided at a clinic on the University campus, thereby indirectly suggesting that the clinic is endorsed by the University. Clearly, this should be unacceptable to an institution with science at its core. I have copied this reply to the Staff Association email address so that they can deal with it. Were it not for the temporary embargo on complaints about false claims of benefit made by homeopaths, I would report the page I linked to to the Advertising Standards Authority as the claims of benefit made on that page clearly breaches the advertising code of the Committee of Advertising Practice by making claims of benefit for homeopathy for which there is no evidence of benefit to support them. The Staff Association should immediately remove this page from the website and stop promoting this quack “therapy” before the ASA takes steps to deal with this in the same way as it is dealing with other homeopathy websites and their owners. The University should immediately distance itself from this promotion to prevent it being tainted by association, no matter how indirect that association may be."

So, will the University of Exeter take the necessary steps to disassociate itself from the promotion of homeopathy? We can but hope!

 

 

The EU and Homeopathy for cows

Recently an article appeared in the newspapers regarding a decision to spend EU (and hence UK taxpayers) money on homeopathy for cows. One version of the story was linked to on Twitter:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8731706/Brussels-propose-spending-millions-on-homeopathy-for-cows.html

Needless to say, this sparked outrage on Twitter, with numerous comments on this, hashtagged with #ten23. Now, as has been more than adequately demonstrated on multiple occasions that homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo and an elaborate scam. Given the history of homeopathy it probably qualifies for the longest-running scam in medical history. That it has been around for so long says more about the inadequacies of science and medicine to counteract with evidence from properly-conducted high quality clinical trials. Early "successes" for homeopathy probably represented avoidance of ineffective and dangerous therapies as the clinical trial 200 years ago was not exactly a common method of investigation!

Why would the EU choose to spend money on homeopathy for cows? It seems that they have somehow been persuaded by pro-homeopathy pressure groups into believing that animals show benefit in trials of homeopathy as - surely - animals are immune from placebo effects. Hmm. OK. The animals themselves may not be influenced directly by placebos but the same cannot be said of those adminstering homeopathic "remedies" or observing their apparent effects. There is also the study of homeopathy in bovine mastitis, reported as positive in a deeply-flawed trial. For a critical appraisal of this trial and the cherry-picking of trials so characteristic of CAM supporters, see http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2010/09/can-homeopathy-cure-mastitis-in-cows.html

While I'm well aware of the faults of the EU, it does also do a lot of good - for example in improving consumers rights. However, I felt that I should write to my MEP's to see if this ridiculous decision could be changed. Here's the email I sent to them, via http://www.writetothem.com/ - thoroughly recommended as a way of contacting your elected representatives. Here's the email I sent them:-

"Dear Derek Vaughan, Kay Swinburne, Jill Evans and John Bufton,

I read with dismay an article on the website of "The Daily Telegraph"

today regarding a proposal to spend millions of pounds/euros on homeopathy for cows.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8731706/Brussels-propose-spending-millions-on-homeopathy-for-cows.html

This is quite possibly one of the most ridiculous and absurd proposals I have ever heard of! Homeopathy, like every other form of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine", is quackery and charlatanism.

For information on this, I can recommend visiting the websites www.1023.org.uk and www.senseaboutscience.org You may also be aware of the conclusions of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee in its Fourth Report "Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy" published in February 2010.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/45/4502.htm

The conclusion is clear cut - homeopathy is a scam, no better than placebo. It should not be afforded any sort of respectability by endorsement from sources such as the European Parliament and the European Commission. I urge you to do everything possible to prevent this clear waste of European taxpayer's money."

Now, response times can vary from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on who you email and when. Within ten hours, I received an automated response from the office of Kay Swinburne (Conservative) promising to respond within six weeks. Ok, it's summer holiday time, she may be truly busy - I'll just have to wait. Just a few hours later, still less than twelve hours later, I received the following response from of John Bufton (UKIP):-

Dear Dr Morgan, 
Thank you for contacting Mr Bufton MEP regarding yet another example of how the EU is wasting our money
We agree completely that it is not the role of a "free trade organisation", to use our hard earned taxes to subsidise anything - whether it is quackery or not. 
We would not be happy for our taxes to be used by the EU to subsidise the huge pharmaceutical industries of Europe (which I should add here are responsible for more deaths in one day across the EU than 
Homeopathy in a decade - not that I could find any evidence of Homeopathy killing any of its patients). 
Until we leave the EU, the un elected bureaucrats in Brussels will continue to use our money on hair brained schemes, and there is nothing that MEPs can do about it.
Sincerely
   Nathan L Gill 

PA to John Bufton MEP 

Err? What the fuck? As if this response in itself wasn't bad enough, the email bore a 2 megabyte PDF file entitled "The EU...Have I Been Lied To".
So, not only do I get a somewhat crackpot response but I also get a recruitment drive document for UKIP. To say I am not a fan of UKIP would be understating the matter. So I have emailed back:-

Dear Mr. Gill,
Thank you for your prompt reply.
I am glad that you agree that the EU should not be involved in any way in the promotion of such quackery. I am, however, disappointed by some of the patently ridiculous remarks that you subsequently make in this email regarding pharmaceuticals and homeopathy. I agree that the EU should not be subsidising pharmaceutical companies. It is also, of course, true that patients suffer adverse effects from medications. Sometimes these are very serious, life-threatening and (rarely) fatal.  I seriously question your statement regarding the number of deaths that are attributable to adverse drug reactions. Could you please tell me where you get your figures from? You should be aware that there are many sites on the internet which spread misinformation and downright lies about medicines, but there are reliable sources such as the Food and Drug Administration (USA) and the MHRA (UK).
As for your statement regarding homeopathy, I’m sorry to say that it is disappointing that you seem unaware of the deaths and serious harm that has resulted from people using homeopathy instead of real medicine. Perhaps the most shocking example of this is the story of Penelope Dingle in Australia - http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/learn-from-this-tragedy/story-e6frfhqf-1225881062712  Reading the Coroner’s report is particularly harrowing http://www.safetyandquality.health.wa.gov.au/docs/mortality_review/inquest_finding/Dingle_Finding.pdf
Several other examples can be found at http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html
There is a key difference between medicines and therapies properly licensed and used as compared to homeopathy and other forms of so-called “complementary and alternative medicines” (CAM) – efficacy. The available evidence is clearly that homeopathy and other CAM modalities are either no better than placebo or are actually worse than placebo (i.e. harmful). When deciding about the use of medicines a risk-benefit analysis is conducted. As homeopathy and CAM modalities have no benefit, the risk-benefit analysis is clearly all risk and no benefit.
Finally,  may I say that I do not agree with your politics and overall views of the EU and European Parliament. They are no different in their stupidities than the UK Parliament and its Members, for example Nadine Dorries MP. We need our elected representatives to act sensibly, act in accordance with available evidence and not use these instruments of government to further their own personal agendas. I believe that the UKIP is at best misguided in its overall views. Ultimately, you will be held accountable through the ballot box."
Let's see if I get any response to this and also whether the other MEP's for my area respond.