Tag Archives: Birkbeck

More on homeopathy at Birkbeck

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A little while ago I wrote about the set-up of a homeopathic society at Birkbeck and my concerns about it. This prompted me to write to our Student Union to try and understand exactly what was going on, what the size of the operation was and if we were financing this (in my opinion) ethically dubious behaviour by students of another university on our campus. I never heard back, despite chasing.

However my point did appear to have struck home, at least for a brief while: posters were removed from the lifts and corridors and their original website was torn down and replaced with this one. I’d like to class this as a small victory as it appears I have at least cleared the name of my College from their website and so we are no longer associated with such drivel.

I suppose the next stop is to drive them out of using College rooms by showing the College what nonsense is being harboured within our building. I think that shall be my next port of call.

Homeopathy closer to home

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In the last post, I mentioned that the evidence and perception of homeopathy is becoming a “great interest of mine”. I thought I’d better explain why, rather than just leaving it as some ambiguous waffle.

The main reason my interest has suddenly just shot up is that homeopathy has just merged two of my hobbies: grumbling about science and student politics. This has happened in the form of the Birkbeck University Homeopathic Society which formed earlier this year at Birkbeck, where I study, and has been advertised in the lifts for a while now.

Now, I’m aware that the NHS spends around £4million every year on homeopathy, and that is alarming, but somewhat abstracted from me: I wouldn’t choose to do it and by virtue of not having a job, I don’t pay taxes to help support it. However, when it starts to occur in the same building as me, associated with the name of my university and in a place where many of us are practising a real science, with the scientific method, it becomes a lot harder to swallow. Made even worse (or maybe better), by the fact that their website proclaims them to be Middlesex Uni students – so what opportunity the society creates for Birkbeck students in beyond me.

So that is the reason behind my new found interest and I’m definitely going to be doing a bit of digging and maybe even start a little campaign of my own.

For more information on homeopathy, I can’t recommend enough the 10:23 site, particularly here for a quick overview of what the fuss is.