Just a quick bit of light relief and the opportunity to point the finger of idiocy at our Right Honourable elected members. You may remember David Tredinnick as the MP with the obsession with homeopathy and CAM and the incredulity bypass making him the parliamentary equivalent of Douglas Adams’ electric monk. He believes so you don’t have to this pillock of the establishment. Not content with the scorn and derision the previous Early Day Motion (EDM) heaped upon this blustering buffoon he is doing his best to drag his reputation down from that of an MP of little brain to that of one having no brain at all by proposing yet another idiotic EDM. EDM 1549 is as follows:
HERBAL CLINIC AT THE ROYAL LONDON HOMEOPATHIC HOSPITAL
That this House welcomes the opening of the first NHS herbal clinic at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (RLHH); notes that the clinic is staffed by highly qualified conventionally-trained doctors with additional qualifications in complementary medicine; further notes that herbal medicines can be used for a wide range of conditions, acute and long-term, alone or as a complement to other treatments; considers that herbal medicine is particularly helpful in treating skin and digestive disorders, allergies, joint problems, stress and recurring infections, thus saving funds and resources in NHS primary care facilities; observes that the clinic only uses herbal medicines produced to the highest standards and approved by UCLH’s Use of Medicines Committee; welcomes the RLHH’s aim to integrate clinical excellence in complementary therapies with the best of conventional medicine; and calls on the Government to establish a network of integrated healthcare clinics encompassing herbal medicine at the existing regional homeopathic hospitals.
I shall comment little other than refer readers to this post from David Colquhoun on the efficacy of herbal medicines and his opening paragraph.
A paper published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal, October 2007, has been reported widely. In the same issue there was a commentary by Edzard Ernst. They show the astonishingly poor evidence than herbal treatments work, despite the fact that they have been around for thousands of years. They looked at 1330 published trials on herbal medicines and found 3 (yes three) that stood up to scrutiny, Of those three, two were negative and one indecisive.
And I will finish up by listing his fellow MPs who have signed this EDM and between them don’t even manage to make up a half-wit let alone a whole one.
Alan Meale, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Alan Simpson, Rudi Vis, Glenda Jackson, Kevin Hopkins and Ann Cryer.
I wonder what it will take to make David Tredinnick and others say,
“I have been foolish and deluded and I am an MP of no brain at all”
