Homeopathist fined €6.35 (again) after death of Mayo patient (again)

robindch

From the Irish Times this morning, comes the following sad story:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2005/0405/2714053675HM3INQUEST.html

...or, in summary:

A 49-year-old Co Mayo man, Paul Howie, died of suffocation caused by a cancerous throat tumour. In court, Mr Howie's wife, Michelle, claimed that Mulranny-based "therapist", Mineke Kamper, had subjected the dead man's wife to "fear and terror" as she treated Mr Howie, who died on April 22nd, 2003.

Michelle Howie said in court, "Mineke Kamper had repeatedly said to us that we had a choice but if we did get medical treatment Paul would die and that she could and would cure him. She then relayed stories to me of people who did not follow her advice and who were now dead. She looked me in the eye and said did I want my husband's death on my hands. She looked at our baby, Alan, and asked could I look him in the eye and say I was responsible for his daddy's death."

Ms Howie said she now believed Ms Kamper should not be allowed to continue operating in the manner in which she does at present.

"She is accountable to no one. She has not the decency or common courtesy to this inquest or to Paul's memory to turn up here today. [...] Something needs to be done about this woman Mineke Kamper."

The coroner, John O'Dwyer, described as "pitiful" the only recourse open to him was to impose a fine of €6.35 on Ms Kamper for failing to answer the summons served on her. He added that "The deceased found himself under the total control of a domineering, self-styled natural health therapist who insisted on his surrendering himself exclusively to her care. It appears from the evidence that the deceased was misled and misinformed as to the nature of the illness that led to his death. Because of fear and threats from Ms Kamper, he did not seek the help of a medical doctor. In fact, Mrs Howie states that the advice from his health therapist was that 'Paul would die with conventional medicine'."

It was of great concern to him that unqualified practitioners in healthcare were not answerable to any regulatory authority, Mr O' Dwyer said.

While the 2004 Health and Social Care Professionals Bill regulated professionals from chiropodists to radiographers, there was no regulatory authority for "freelance operators in health-care".

The jury returned a verdict of death by natural causes. Mr Howie leaves behind a wife and one son.

robindch

It seems that it's not homeopath Mineke Kamper's first brush with the law either, having been summonsed (and failed) to appear May district court in December 2001, following the death of another patient, Jacqueline Alderslad, earlier in the year. It seems that, contrary to a statement which the homeopath made to the gardai, the dead patient had recorded in her diary that she'd been advised by Kamper to give up *all* medication she had been taking for her condition except for an inhaler.

The same John O'Dwyer presided over this inquest and Ms Kamper failed to turn up at this inquest too, attracting a fine of five pounds for non-appearance.

Details are not precise, but it seems that Ms Kamper claims membership of the Reflexology institute, who claimed to know nothing about her, with the chair of the same institution, one Lua McIlraith, wanting statutory regulation to be introduced as soon as possible, so "we can be seen as upright, honest people who are not in the business of killing people", an extraordinarily rare instance of a CAM-artist openly criticizing another. Meanwhile, over in the Dail, Minister O'Donoghue stated, almost three and a half years ago (see this article), that he was going to do something, but this seems, subsequently, to have turned into something that "was not a priority". Anybody have any further info?

In addition to the IT articles above, further references to this sad case are here and here.

Anybody care to contact the GMIT, or perhaps the good Ms Kamper herself, for a comment?

- robin.

KCF

This type of thing really makes me irate. Okay, if you want to treat somebody with water, but persuading them to give up their other medication is criminal. Vulnerable people with grave illnesses will often listen to quacks when they tell them what to do. I know a few people who have died in this sort of way. A man who gave up his cholesterol tablets in favour of homeopathy pills and died of a heart attack. My great uncle went to Lourdes rather than to hospital and came back 3 months later when his cancer was inoperable and he suffered a horrible drawn out death. :mad:

Eoghan-psych

With all due respect, is it fair to place blame on the "therapist" here?

Put it like this - when those stupid "please send me money so I can free up my inheritance in a New York bank" emails arrive, don't we all sit there thinking "what kind of moron actually falls for this?"

If you are stupid enough to fall for someone telling you they can cure you without medical intervention then, lets be honest, at least a significant part of the blame must lie with you.

If people stop falling for a scam, the conmen stop using it. Simple economics.

Myksyk

I disagree Eoghan-psych. I don't believe this or similar cases (where there are serious health issues at stake) are about the stupidity of consumers. It is more likely that they are about utter desperation, vulnerability, suggestibility and lack of information on the one hand (that of the consumer/patient) and gross negligence, ignorance, unethical conduct and the selling of useless treatments on behalf of the 'practitioner'.

Skepticism should be part of the solution through the education of consumers so they can make informed health choices (particularly when they are vulnerable and desparate) and the challenging of people who insist on selling health products/treatments for which they make claims that have no basis in reality.

davros

Eoghan-psych wrote:

If you are stupid enough to fall for someone telling you they can cure you without medical intervention then, lets be honest, at least a significant part of the blame must lie with you.

I understand your point but I don't believe most people attending homeopaths are stupid.

Their whole lives they have heard through the media and by word-of-mouth that alternative medicine is valid and even more effective than real medicine. Homepaths practise openly and unhindered in a country with strict laws regulating fraud, consumer rights and the sale of medicines. Homeopathic preparations are on sale in chemists, Prince Charles is an advocate, etc., etc. Why wouldn't you believe it? You could easily live your entire life without hearing anyone say a bad word against homeopathy.

So I'm sympathetic towards those who are taken in and harmed, or at least made poorer, by quacks. The death of that man is exactly the reason, IMHO, that the Irish Skeptics Society needs to exist. Alternative medicine is dangerous and nobody else is prepared to stand up and say it.

Eoghan-psych

davros wrote:

So I'm sympathetic towards those who are taken in and harmed, or at least made poorer, by quacks. The death of that man is exactly the reason, IMHO, that the Irish Skeptics Society needs to exist. Alternative medicine is dangerous and nobody else is prepared to stand up and say it.

I can be sympathetic towards those taken in with regard to sea sickness, or bags under their eyes. These are minor issues, and one could be excused from checking the evidence for or against the treatment.

I cannot, however, feel sympathy towards those who put their lives in the hands of whackjobs. It's all well and good saying "the whackjobs shouldn't do X", but at the end of the day would *you* submit yourself to treatment - by *anyone* - without looking at the evidence? If you had cancer, would you just take someone's word for it or would you go to your doctor and ask him about it, or look up research on the net?

Education of consumers is definitely needed, and should definitely be advocated by everyone with both eyes open. Same goes for regulation of "therapists". What we *also* need to start doing is take to task those who support idiocy and quackery. When papers report on yet another email money scam, right alongside the "unscrupulous criminals" bit there should be a mention of the "naive, greedy, foolish" people who fell for it. Make nonsense a double headed issue - if someone leaves their bike unchained outside a building, when the bike's gone we don't hesitate to say "you big eejit, why didn't you lock it - serves you right".

robindch

Last weekend, amongst many other excellent posters, I was given a present of the following, disappointingly appropriate, A3-sized reproduction of a long-forgotten Soviet public information poster. The text translates roughly as "Look, a witch! They don't cure you, but only take your cash and cripple you."



...one of the things which, much to their credit, the Soviets did try to stamp out -- unsuccessfully, as it unfortunately turns out.

- robin.

robindch

> I cannot, however, feel sympathy towards those who
> put their lives in the hands of whackjobs.

When one boils this argument down a little, you're left with the question of whether it's better to regulate human activity through legislation to ensure that consistent standards are applied, or to leave the same activities 'find their own level', and have compensatory legislation in place, to clean up any mess that might have arisen on account of shoddy work (of whatever kind).

This report on boiler design in in the 19th century and the different approaches of the US and UK governments in regulating the industry at the time, is relevant here. In short, the US (generally agreed to have been legislating at the behest of boiler manufacturers), didn't implement any serious regulatory control of the industry, while the UK, after much the same initial carnage from exploding boilers which occurred in the US, began regulating the industry far more heavily. The obvious enough result was that deaths from boiler explosion in the UK dropped dramatically, while similar deaths in the US continued at levels which would be today considered indicative of criminal negligence.

The two situations are comparable -- most people are about as competent to judge boiler design as they are to judge medical diagnoses. At the moment, while there is comprehensive design guidelines + legislation intended to guarantee that the boiler in your local power station is as unlikely to explode as is humanly possible, there is no comparable legislation, that I'm aware of, to guarantee that the medical diagnosis you receive is provided by somebody with genuine, as opposed to fraudulent, medical knowledge. And in Ireland, we're even worse off -- that the homeopath who is responsible in this case, isn't even compelled required to turn up at the inquest into the death of one of her unfortunate patients and is subsequently fined less than a tenner at the inquest into what some people would regard as a straightforward case of culpable homicide.

Until such regulatory legislation is enacted and enforced, some small proportion of the sickest members of society are going to continue dying hideously painful deaths at the hands of unscrupulous frauds and, sorry, but I think that's a disgrace.

- robin.

Gordon

Can anyone not turn up in court and only get fined 6.35?

If I steal someone's car will it only cost me 6.35?

davros

Eoghan-psych wrote:

If you had cancer, would you just take someone's word for it or would you go to your doctor and ask him about it, or look up research on the net?

If you felt more tired than usual and went to a reiki therapist to get your energies back in balance... but several months later it turned out you actually had cancer and you let it progress too far to be treated, is that stupidity?

These days I don't breathe without checking the pros and cons first on the internet. But before the 'net, I would just have taken a doctor's word for it. And if I considered an alternative medicine practitioner ("quack" is so much more concise) to be on an equal, but separate, footing with a conventional doctor, I might take his word for it.

The internet's wonderful but how many people are using it well as a research tool? And would they be as likely to find something plausible and wrong as they would to find something genuine and helpful?

I do like your suggestion though that it should be socially embarrassing to visit a homeopath. We're a long way from that at the moment, unfortunately.

davros

Gordon wrote:

Can anyone not turn up in court and only get fined 6.35?

If I steal someone's car will it only cost me 6.35?

It wasn't a criminal proceeding but an inquest at the Coroner's Court. Nobody was on trial.

davros

robindch wrote:

...one of the things which, much to their credit, the Soviets did try to stamp out -- unsuccessfully, as it unfortunately turns out.

The Chinese Communists are still trying. A new regulation this year from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television bans advertisements for psychic hotlines and other superstitious and pseudo-scientific services.

They are often criticised (rightly, to a great extent) for the stance they take against Falun Gong but it is at least consistent with a policy of stamping out nonsense and superstition that goes back many decades.

KCF

davros wrote:

The Chinese Communists are still trying. A new regulation this year from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television bans advertisements for psychic hotlines and other superstitious and pseudo-scientific services.

They are often criticised (rightly, to a great extent) for the stance they take against Falun Gong but it is at least consistent with a policy of stamping out nonsense and superstition that goes back many decades.

I dunno if stamping out superstitions is worth a cultural revolution! In any case I reckon that state bans are fairly unreliable ways of stamping out things - they can work, but they can have the opposite effect (for example, religion in the Czech republic versus prohibition in the US). I generally think that the best solution to all such questions is to forbid unqualified people to _charge_ for their quackery. No bans, relatively easy to regulate (compared to a ban anyway) and most importantly no profits (which I suspect would lead quickly to no quacks).

robindch

> In any case I reckon that state bans are fairly unreliable
> ways of stamping out things - they can work, but they
> can have the opposite effect

Yeah, you're right it's almost impossible to stamp out something by negative means, which is why positive, thought-inducing, and lengthy, education in schools + universities is so important (and why the creationists in the US are pressing so hard to get their brain-deadening crap onto the school syllabuses there).

> I generally think that the best solution to all such
> questions is to forbid unqualified people to _charge_
> for their quackery.

Won't work There seem to be quite a few quacks out there already who operate in something close to this way, by suggesting a 'donation' rather than any fixed fee (+ then go on to suggest what the donation might be). Patchy research upon my part indicates that suggested donations range from around €50 to €100 per hour. The same 'no charge' business operates in many churches too -- see many websites, for example, of US-based evangelical outfits, where almost all will have healthy-looking, comprehensive, 'electronic giving' sections

> No bans, relatively easy to regulate (compared to a
> ban anyway) and most importantly no profits (which
> I suspect would lead quickly to no quacks).

As I mentioned above, licensing is much easier -- specifically, on the provider side, you legislate that the practitioner must show the patient their medical license at the start of a consultation, and on the consumer side, educate people to ask for the license. This way, people ought quickly get used to the idea of the license itself implying some level of competency, and the lack of it indicating the opposite. Something like the Guild of Master Craftsmen was supposed to be, but turned out to be anything but!

- robin.

ISAW

davros wrote:

I understand your point but I don't believe most people attending homeopaths are stupid.

[ISAW] Even if they were stupid stupidity is not illegal. However, taking advantage of it is!

ISAW

robindch wrote:

From the Irish Times this morning, comes the following sad story:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2005/0405/2714053675HM3INQUEST.html

...or, in summary:

A 49-year-old Co Mayo man, Paul Howie, died of suffocation caused by a cancerous throat tumour. In court, Mr Howie's wife, Michelle, claimed that Mulranny-based "therapist", Mineke Kamper, had subjected the dead man's wife to "fear and terror" as she treated Mr Howie, who died on April 22nd, 2003.

...

The jury returned a verdict of death by natural causes. Mr Howie leaves behind a wife and one son.

there was a scottish guy on Damien Kiberd's Lunchtime show on Dublin Newstalk on 106FM. he was on about regulating the homeopath industry and how chiropractors have done so and become mainstream. i texted the station saying i had just taken two bottles of homeopathic sleeping pills I didnt feel drowsy but might I be in any danger?

KCF

William Reville had an article about homeopathy in his science column in the IT last week. It was ok. It did at least point out the potential dangers of homeopathy, but it did spend far too much time investigating the possibility of water having a molecular memory of the 'active' substance.

I don't think that there is any point in looking for such molecular funnies as, if it were true, then every drop of water in the world would already be a cure for every poisonous substance in the world - we've had a few billion years of some really serious dilutions, so we would be expected to be immune to everything. For example, homeopathic remedies should be a much stronger cure for whatever dinosaur piss causes than for whatever they are actually diluted with.

Zombrex

davros wrote:

Their whole lives they have heard through the media and by word-of-mouth that alternative medicine is valid and even more effective than real medicine.

I would point out this woman was not a homeopath in the same way your mate who ties a string to your loose tooth and pulls it out it not a dentist.

As far as I am aware she had no formal recongised homeopathic qualification or experience. Seemingly she did a 2 week course or something. She is a nut. No qualified homeopath in the world would tell someone to stop all treatment for cancer.

We should be careful that we don't tar all homepaths with the same brush because this unqualified, unexperiences nut job killed someone.

KCF

Wicknight wrote:

We should be careful that we don't tar all homepaths with the same brush because this unqualified, unexperiences nut job killed someone.

What reason is there not to tar all homeopaths with the 'absolute nonsense' brush? Sure some of them may be more reckless than others, as with any profession, but they're still peddlers in nonsense to a (wo)man.

Zombrex

KCF wrote:

What reason is there not to tar all homeopaths with the 'absolute nonsense' brush? Sure some of them may be more reckless than others, as with any profession, but they're still peddlers in nonsense to a (wo)man.

Well you can choose to believe it is all nonsense if you wish, that isn't the point. The point is that proper homeopathic medicine is a professional industry, they don't "pedel" anything.

No professional homeopath would try to force you to take anything, or instruct you to give up any traditional medical procedure. If you ask them for help they will give you advice.

Like I said no qualified homeopath in the world would have told this man to go off all medicine, or even told him that homeopathic medicine would cure him.

KCF

Wicknight wrote:

Well you can choose to believe it is all nonsense if you wish, that isn't the point. The point is that proper homeopathic medicine is a professional industry, they don't "pedel" anything.

No professional homeopath would try to force you to take anything, or instruct you to give up any traditional medical procedure. If you ask them for help they will give you advice.

I think that the fact that is a professional industry is merely a fig-leaf. I mean if soothsayers or astrologers were to form their own 'professional' body (they probably have you know ) what difference would it make?

Wicknight wrote:

Like I said no qualified homeopath in the world would have told this man to go off all medicine, or even told him that homeopathic medicine would cure him.

Considering the fact that many qualified doctors have been proven to give advice of such poor quality to their patients, resulting in deaths and permanent ill-health, I rather think you are being a little bit sweeping with this assertion.

davros

Wicknight wrote:

Like I said no qualified homeopath in the world would have ... told him that homeopathic medicine would cure him.

I hope, as you say, that they don't recommend forgoing real medicine but I can't agree that they are not offering "cures"(*). And once they are offering cures, no matter what sort of legal get-out clauses they couch their statements in, the clear implication is that homeopathy is an alternative route to restored health.

Going to both an alternative and a mainstream practitioner/doctor is a belt-and-braces approach that is twice as expensive as choosing one or the other. Why not simply go for the one that offers zero side-effects and works in harmony with your mysterious energies? Promoting ignorance under the heading of "homeopathy", no matter how qualified the practitioner is a dangerous game. I don't see a useful distinction between the professional, qualified homeopath and the "quack" homeopath.

(*) It was easy to find an Irish homeopathic organisation promising cures:
http://www.homeopathyireland.net/simple.htm

ISAW

Wicknight wrote:

Like I said no qualified homeopath in the world would have told this man to go off all medicine, or even told him that homeopathic medicine would cure him.

Bit of a "true scotsman" argument there? Exactly what is a "qualified homeopath"?

ISAW

Lets just get things straight:

theory of homeopathy:

Homeopathy is based on the idea of a "vital force" ( a bit likr the Oriental Chi?)

Proving
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/homeopathy/84253

basically i give you something to eat or drink lets say sulphur or better yet lets say petrol. After some time your head hurts and you have a pain in your right knee and you eye swells up. I write all this down.

some time later a guy comes in to me with a swollen eye. His head hurts. I ask if he has a pain in his right knee. YES he sayd how did you know? You have petrol i say. and so I give him petrol.
Why do I give him petrol?

The Law of similars

Hahnemann developed a theory he called "the law of similars". According to this theory, a medicine that causes the same symptoms as those of the disease will override the disease, such that the morbid function of the vital force is now caused by the medicine, not the original disease, and as the effect of the medicine wears off, the patient will be left cured. Thus, Hahnemann declares the group of homeopathic medicines to be the one and only path to cure.

The result of the provings were compiled into a work called the Materia Medica, which has later been expanded by Hahnemann’s followers. The idea of homeopathic treatment is that the patient’s symptom profile is taken, then the Materia Medica is carefully perused to find the medicine that provides the best (ideally perfect) match of that symptom profile. That is assumed to be the medicine that cures that particular case. During this matching, interestingly, a medicine is sought that matches as many of the patient’s symptoms as possible, whereas any symptoms recorded for the medicine, but NOT matching the patient’s profile are normally ignored.

Concentrations
Now do you really want someone to drink petrol? Don't worry. homeopaths dilute them! How much? How about one part in ten to the thirty? Apparently the effect still holds true. And not only that they havce a way to dilute them which nowadays even extends to linking water up to your phone and having it done over the internet ( after you have paid for the service).

Zombrex

KCF wrote:

I mean if soothsayers or astrologers were to form their own 'professional' body (they probably have you know ) what difference would it make?

Or doctors or dentists ....

KCF wrote:

Considering the fact that many qualified doctors have been proven to give advice of such poor quality to their patients, resulting in deaths and permanent ill-health, I rather think you are being a little bit sweeping with this assertion.

What doctor do you go to that would tell someone to ignore all forms of traditional cancer treatment, because I suggest I don't go to them again ...

Zombrex

davros wrote:

I hope, as you say, that they don't recommend forgoing real medicine but I can't agree that they are not offering "cures"(*). And once they are offering cures, no matter what sort of legal get-out clauses they couch their statements in, the clear implication is that homeopathy is an alternative route to restored health.

They are offering "cures" in the same way that doctors offer "cures" ... but in the same way that a doctor doesn't promise mircles neither does a professional homeopath. Like I said, no professional homeopath would tell you that their treatment will definitly cure serious illness like cancer, or that you should not seek other medical advice.

Zombrex

ISAW wrote:

Bit of a "true scotsman" argument there? Exactly what is a "qualified homeopath"?

Someone with a recongised qualification in homeopathic medicne. What is a "qualified doctor"?

Eriugena

ISAW wrote:

Now do you really want someone to drink petrol?

They don't use petrol so why do you choose this example?

Don't worry. homeopaths dilute them! How much? How about one part in ten to the thirty? Apparently the effect still holds true. And not only that they havce a way to dilute them which nowadays even extends to linking water up to your phone and having it done over the internet ( after you have paid for the service).

Do you have source for this last claim?

KCF

Wicknight wrote:

Or doctors or dentists ....

The difference being that there is a scientific method to training in those disciplines and there is a huge amount of evidence to support their efficacy in healing ills, whereas homeopathy is based purely upon faith and mysticism and is not useful for anything, except perhaps some obscure psychological benefits that you might gain from sharing the company of the homeopath.

I also think it is safe to say that for every minute and dollar spent on homeopathy, some fraction of that is prevented from being spent on something that works.

So, to put it simply, if their 'professional' status was to mean what that term does when applied to doctors and dentists, we would expect homoepaths to show similar ethical standards. In particular we would expect them to show similar commitment to treating the patient in the most effective way - according to scientific principles (double blind studies, peer reviewed published research, reproducible experiments, etc, etc). If homeopaths were to operate according to such ethics (which have remained established as the correct ethics for healers since ancient greece) , then they would all have to retire en-masse instantly and redirect all their patients towards a scientific practitioner. Obviously, they don't, nor are they likely too, but it means that their 'professional' status is meaningless. It is perfectly analoguous to a "code of thieves".

Wicknight wrote:

What doctor do you go to that would tell someone to ignore all forms of traditional cancer treatment, because I suggest I don't go to them again ...

Obviously, I wouldn't go to one if I could avoid it, but there have been a great number of malpractice cases which have exposed some shocking negligence on the part of doctors.

Zombrex

ISAW wrote:

Lets just get things straight:

Homeopathy is based on the idea of a "vital force"

Homeopathy is based on the idea that a very tiny amount of a substance can trigger the body to produce a positive health response. How this happens, or even if this actually happens, is unclear.

It is an "alternative" medicine in that the methods of how it work are unclear, the focus is on the results. Some studies have shown it does have a positive result on the pathent, others have shown little change. Traditional medicine is skeptical because the methods that the homeopathic substance is supposed to trigger a response is unclear. Some scientists believe that it is chemcially impossible for such a tiny amount to trigger a response in a patient.

Any proper homeopath will tell you this up front. They are not in the profession of "pedaling" "cures" to make a quick buck. It is not magic, or witch-doctor stuff, nor do they claim it is a miracle cure to things like cancer.