Does Prince Charles know what he is talking about?

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Does Prince Charles know what he is talking about?
Published Tuesday 23 March 2021
I am currently working on a project that involves studying a lot of what our heir to the throne – or is the ‘the heir to our throne? – as done, said and written about so-called alternative medicine ( SCAM ). Unavoidably, this meant reading his 2010 book HARMONY, A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT OUR WORLD. In it, Prince Charles states that “… I cannot bear to see people suffer unnecessarily when, so often, a complementary treatment can be beneficial…” This is a statement that Charles has made several times before.
Each time I come across it, I have to think of some of my own patients. It’s a long time since I was a clinician, yet one patient, in particular, often comes to my mind.
He had been a young man healthy, happily married, nice kids, good job, etc. Then one day, he was inattentive or distracted and drove his car full with his wife and kids across a red signal at an unguarded railway crossing. They were all killed instantly.
But almost miraculously, he survived and had just relatively minor injuries which we hoped to put right. So, his body was about to be fine, but his mind was not. Just before being dismissed from the hospital, he tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the 4th-floor window of his room. He survived that too, and we were looking after him and his multiple injuries. As he had lost a lot of blood, he received several blood transfusions. One had been infected and he contracted HIV. He did not survive.
Does Charles know what he is talking about?
How often does he see truly suffering patients?
Does he know that faked empathy might be seen as offensive?
On what evidential basis does he assume that so-called alternative medicine ( SCAM ) would bring any benefit to severely ill patients?
Does he assume to know better than the clinicians treating the ‘people suffering unnecessarily?
Does he realize that his words are an insult to those who actually do see patients suffer and empathize with them?
Does he know what it means to do everything possible to help patients?
Does he realize that this is achieved by employing the most effective treatments currently available?
Does he know that the most effective treatments would almost never include SCAM?
I am sorry, but sometimes Charles’s musings about SCAM do get under my skin.
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wheels5894 scotland on Tuesday 23 March 2021 at 10:24
Well, no one can argue with that. The very idea that there is a treatment out there that caring clinicians don’t know about or ignore is a disgrace. Maybe people don’t recognise that vast amount of research that goes on to provide good treatments. Charles should realise that the opposite is true of ‘complimentary’ medicine where no research is done – and not even a trial done properly to discover if the treatments work (hint – they don’t).
If I had to counter that statement by Charles I would ask him to show me one, single treatment from the realm of so-called complimentary treatments that actually works as demonstrated by a double blind trial. I suspect that we would only hear feet walking away as an answer!
David Harrison on Friday 26 March 2021 at 21:05
Its impossible not to feel deeply saddened by such a tragic story. Of course acute emergency treatment is not what Prince Charles is talking about . As it has been stated before the medical profession have no cures for chronic disease , hence why it is term chronic . It amazes me that the medical profession sits on such a high ‘evidence based ‘ box after such scandals as ‘Prozac no better than placebo’ , after suffering chronic neuromuscular pain for over 15 months , after seeing 6 GP’s and getting 6 different diagnoses , I do feel medical practitioners are in need of much better diagnostic skills, and stop relying on pharmaceutical only treatment.
john travis on Saturday 27 March 2021 at 12:40
@ David Harrison
“It amazes me that the medical profession sits on such a high ‘evidence based ‘ box after such scandals as ‘Prozac no better than placebo’ ”
well this is erroneous for starters – you should not believe all that you read in the Daily Mail. SSRIs do actually work in moderate to severe depression and are also effective for to many other indications – e.g. Bi-Polar Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Bulimia, OCD, Panic Disorder, PMDD, Treatment Resistant Depression – and off label for many other conditions.
So exactly what “scandal” are you going on about?
“after suffering chronic neuromuscular pain for over 15 months , after seeing 6 GP’s and getting 6 different diagnoses , I do feel medical practitioners are in need of much better diagnostic skills, and stop relying on pharmaceutical only treatment.”
without knowing the exact details of your presenting condition and the exact diagnoses you have been given it is difficult to be precise but by yourself labelling your condition as “chronic” you are accepting it as “permanent” and incurable.
You also seem to think that every set of symptoms MUST have a diagnosis – this is simply not true. There are many sets of “Medically Unexplained Symptoms” – some trivial but some occurring as “syndromes that can be troubling and debilitating but which remain unexplained and undiagnosed nonetheless.
This is frustrating for both patient and doctor. Sometimes there are treatments which can be palliative even if the cause is unknown.
The other issue is depending upon what exactly you have been told there may well be overlap between the various terminologies used and which mean more or less the same thing. Sometimes doctors disagree – get used to it.
As for relying on pharmaceuticals you may have a point that doctors reach to quickly for the prescription pad as a “quick fix” for a problem. But I believe that this is symptomatic of the whole of society and is merely a reflection of the way patients themselves react when they are asked to do anything that involves taking any kind of responsibility for their own health. You are met with a blank look, a sort of:
“wot me? you can’t be serious? I’m looking for an instant fix like right this minute innit? You know wot I mean?”
And with a sinking heart you realize that there is no realistic chance that this patient is going to stop smoking, lose any weight, take any exercise, eat a healthier diet or do ANY of the health advice things you suggest no matter how many leaflets you give them.
They want a QUICK FIX just like everything advertised on social media says they can have – right now.
The idea of having to put any work into achieving anything is just not compatible with current societal patterns.
“There’s a pill for that.”
And that’s part of the reason influencers are so popular and why SCAM is so popular – because THEY LIE and promise the earth.
So the sad truth may be that your neuromuscular problem may not ever have an actual diagnosis, and you may just have to live with it as best you can. That’s life. And if you find some pills that help what’s so terrible about that?
Of course such conditions are a boon to SCAM artists who will NEVER fail to reach a diagnosis – whether it be “adrenal fatigue” “chronic Lyme” “leaky gut” or some other FAKE DISEASE reached by FAKE TESTS which they can then go on to treat using FAKE THERAPIES at great cost. And since all of these are CHRONIC CONDITIONS these patients are hooked for life.
So which would you prefer – that doctors be honest and admit ignorance or that you see a SCAMmer and be told a lie and receive fake treatment?
Conventional medicine is far from perfect – but that doesn’t make SCAM any more true.
Does Prince Charles know what he is talking about?
No.
john travis on Tuesday 23 March 2021 at 12:44
HRH has not the faintest idea of what he is talking about.
I can think of no area of medicine where “people suffer unnecessarily when, so often, a complementary treatment can be beneficial…” The only possible situation where this could possibly be true is the application of the placebo effect whereby SCAM practitioners so often get to spend much longer with their patients, and so often use theatrical placebos like Acupuncture.
In addition SCAMmers have the additional advantage of being able to LIE to their patients and build up the expectations for their placebo effect enormously – the powerful power of suggestion. More ethical conventional medics are constrained by having to say things llke “there’s only a 50% change this operation will solve this problem.” It doesn’t sound half as marvellous as the miracle promised by the SCAMmer!
Additionally we are all aware that SCAMmers do not do “informed consent” properly – and since the majority of their nonsense doesn’t actually “do” anything anyway there can be no side-effects so they are in the clear anyway!
It’s a very unlevel playing field. And one on which the SCAMmers bad mouth the conventional medics who in general remain silent about the unethical and pseudoscientific antics of the other side.
And as for Charles? He suffers from acute grey cell deficiency and an overdose of self-importance. I don’t believe homeopaths have a cure for that.
David Harrison on Saturday 27 March 2021 at 06:49
All your comments can just as easily be applied to the medical profession , as 50% of the UK population throw their medications away , wasting £8 billion pounds a year , it amazes me that you think everything in the NHS is rosy. I wish there were some original thinkers on this site , and not just recycling very old outdated arguments.It adds nothing to the debate.
“I wish there were some original thinkers on this site”
LUCKY WE HAVW YOU!!!
All our comments cannot as easily be applied to the qualified, registered medical profession.
The 50% figure is surprising – no doubt it comes from a reputable, credible published source?
Sometime medicines are unused because many conditions are self-limiting, but GPs can feel pressurised by patient expectation to prescribe pills, instead of asking the patient to make lifestyle changes. And unused medicines may be left over because of a change in prescription to something that the patient responds to better.
With regard to recycling old outdated arguments, I reflect that the ideas/arguments of Rudolf Steiner, including his argument for Viscum Album (mistletoe) as a cancer treatment (“Iscador”) had no truth behind it then, and no evidence of benefit beyond placebo now, a century later. And the arguments of Samuel Hahnemann are more than two centuries old, and unsupported by credible evidence then or now. And the ideas (he called it a religion) of D.D. Palmer more than a century ago, about subluxations being the cause of all health problems, and spinal manipulation the way to cure health problems, are a century old, and unsupported by evidence then, or now.
Most CAM methodologies are kept going by recycling old outdated arguments that lacked evidence from the start.
By contrast, science has made huge strides in medicine; both in treating acute conditions, and managing chronic conditions. In times past, many conditions never got the chance to become chronic, because without any effective way to manage them, the patients simply died.
Tell me a CAM idea that isn’t outdated and recycled?
Compare and contrast the treatment of the H1N1 virus in 1918, with that of Coronavirus Covid-19 today. Between fifty and a hundred million people (no-one knows the exact figure) died in eighteen months flat, at the end of World War 1, from a vastly smaller world population than today’s. The war only managed to kill around seventeen million people, in four years.
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=double+blind+randomized+controlled+trials+homeopathy&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart This link is a taste of the many double blind randomly controlled clinical trials for homeopathy. Iscador has now been shown to have cytostatic activity https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4127267/ Iscador
Most pharmaceuticals are derived or copies of plant based medicines (eg opiates). Vaccines are not really applicable to the chronic disease argument. Anyway are not really a medical invention but are a natural phenomena. Also, remember anti-biotics are also natural products.
A taste indeed, and a nasty taste at that. It doesn’t amount to a hill o’ beans, and the English is pretty incoherent at that.
What has Viscum Album done, really, to improve cancer outcomes for patients?
No-one here is denying (OK, I cannot speak for absolutely everyone) that plant pharmacology is fascinating, that the plant world containt a multitude of pharmacologically active complex substances, and that a great many phenomenally useful medicines have been derived from plants.
But Rudolf Steiner based his theory about Viscum album on a version of the outdated, recycled and entirely theoretical and superstitious “Doctrine of Signatures”, and Iscador has not demonstrated efficacy beyond placebo. If it had, it would be mainstream, and Dr MK would have used it in his clinical practice.
I do not understand what you mean by “natural”, or what point you are making about vaccinations.
David Harrison on Saturday 27 March 2021 at 15:51
I am not a supporter of Rudolf Steiner , don’t much about him really. I was simply trying to redress the balance , as for people that don’t have an academic background in these subjects , this site seems to suggest there is no evidence base. So it was stated that there was no evidence base for Iscodor, so I sent the published research paper. I agree this is not necessarily the best treatment for cancer. It would have to be compared to current treatments in robust trials. If a patient came to me I would want to check all the available evidence and explain what is the best course of action. By the way I wouldn’t treat patients for cancer anyway, its a specialist area I know very little about. I treat my patients in the way I would want to be treated. With knowledge, kindness & ethics. I am trying to make the case for in my opinion that here is a distinct difference to “hippys doing CAM” and degree trained highly regulated and professional career homeopaths or the like. It upsets me as a Homeopath & a Scientist to be lumped together with “weirdos”. Homeopathy was started by a medical doctor Dr Samuel Hahnemann , who was appalled by medical practices in his day involving blood letting & use of poisons. Not surprisingly he wanted an alternative to this which involved diluting herbal medicines typically to start with using 3X dilutions which represents about 1% of the herbal remedy. He was very successful, again not that surprising given the medical treatments at the time. Homeopathy was immensely successful under Hahnemann but fell into ridicule after his death when an american doctor , James Tyler Kent, took it to extremes of dilution because of his spiritual beliefs. I am pretty sure if many of the ultradilutions clinical trials were repeated with 3X then there would be positive outcomes.
john travis on Sunday 28 March 2021 at 00:11
@ David Harrison
“distinct difference to “hippys doing CAM” and degree trained highly regulated and professional career homeopaths or the like.”
Not so much! Homeopathy is based on magical thinking – not on any scientific basis – it’s not even rational or logical.
JHahnemann just made it up out of whole cloth with absolutely no rational justification. It is pure Tooth Fairy Science!
The Law of similars has no basis in fact or logic and has no empirical proof. It is pure magical thinking.
The same applies to his ideas on succussion.
The idea that diluting a substance make it more potent is counterintuitive, illogical, irrational, and counter to what we observe in everyday life.
For homeopathy to be true large tracts of well established physics, chemistry and biology would have to be proven wrong. Hahnemann just made all this stuff up. He might just as well have written it all on the back of a fag packet.
Homeopathy is not “highly regulated.” Anybody doing minimal study and paying a fee can call themselves a homeopath. The so-called regulation is a joke. This has been established time and again. When the PSA permitted supposedly “self-regulating” homeopaths to keep their house in order which they signally failed to do even under the incredibly lax standards that were permitted of them and it was only when they behaved so egregiously badly that homeopaths with fringe views even for homeopaths were running the show that they lost their PSA accreditation.
“According to the PSA, the SoH’s failings in this regard “led to risks to the public from homeopathy being offered as an alternative for serious conditions such as depression, arthritis and autoimmune conditions that require medical supervision.”
No homeopath should ever be allowed to treat any medical condition of any kind. They are not adequately trained and do not have sufficient understanding. In addition they have delusions about their own abilities that can lead to them attempting treatments well beyond their very limited abilities. This is most definitely a classic case of Dunning Kruger of the worst kind.
The very idea of homeopaths treating cancer is terrifying! I trust you realize that in the UK it would also be illegal?
” It upsets me as a Homeopath & a Scientist to be lumped together with “weirdos”
Well if you lie down with the dogs you must expect to get up with fleas.
One of the reasons for the PSA being pushed to finally kick the SoH out was that the loons in your ranks were pushing CEASE therapy for autism. Since any rational person with medical knowledge is aware that autism is not caused by vaccines and that it is a developmental disorder on a wide spectrum and is not amenable to any such “cure” especially anything as bizarre as that concocted by homeopathy. Beyond which the whole philosophy and thinking behind CEASE therapy is highly objectionable and offensive to people with autism and their carers.
Nonetheless despite many years of attempts to educate homeopaths on this subject you have proved intractable and impossible to educate. You have proved totally resistant to all attempts to reason with you and to explain the facts and the reasons why the rest of us find all of this to be the case. In the face of a mountain of evidence and the consensus of medical and scientific opinion and the SoH decided to be a hold-out and stick with the objectionable and irrational and unworkable CEASE therapy.
Yet another case of ideology winning over reason and pragmatism.
And ideology is all homeopathy has got going for it – pure ideology.
“I am pretty sure if many of the ultradilutions clinical trials were repeated with 3X then there would be positive outcomes.”
This is pure speculation with absolutely nothing to back it up. More Tooth Fairy Science. Typical of homeopaths – just make it up as you go along why don’t you?
There is absolutely no reason to suppose homeopathy would work from basic principles – it is an idiotic idea!
There is a vast amount of scientific evidence in terms of trials that HAS FAILED TO DEMONSTRATE THAT IT WORKS!
There is zero evidence that homeopathy can treat any disease. Period.
Which bit of that do you not understand?
It doesn’t matter how much or how little you dilute it. The basic idea if flawed. The law of similars isn’t a “Law.” Hahnemann just made the bloody thing up! And the rest of you have been chasing your tails ever since because you never thought to question the basic premise, you just took it as read. A little bit of critical thinking and scepticism would go a long way.
David B on Saturday 27 March 2021 at 21:54
@David Harrison:
“I am pretty sure if many of the ultradilutions clinical trials were repeated with 3X then there would be positive outcomes.”
What David Harrison is “pretty sure” of, doesn’t cut it as validating a treatment, Mr Harrison! It doesn’t constitute an evidence base!
However, since you are so sure, do the trials, and publish the results.
The use of 3X is surely well outside the mainstram of homeopathic opinion and practice. 30C and above are MUCH more usual.
David B on Wednesday 24 March 2021 at 17:05
I happened to catch BBC Radio 4’s excellent programme “Health Matters” today. A very interesting edition, about the Recovery Trial and Covid 19. This is about real medical science making real discoveries that make a real difference to patients. It is available to listen at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000tccg
Listener on Thursday 25 March 2021 at 06:00
@john travis
yes John, you nailed it. I’ll agree that as he states it, it’s slightly overstated. Disease in most cases comes as the result of too much of something, or not enough of something other. The immune system is far to complicated to arrive at a panacea that easily.
Many countries, such as the mentioned India leave us quite surprised. It appears the Indian government attacked the problem from a different perspective…. to their credit. Many here at this forum have been waiting for a bomb to go off in India, it appears it won’t.
Here is a long read on Vitamin D and sunlight.
I personally don’t think the cows milk is part of the treatment, your opinion may vary.
john travis on Sunday 28 March 2021 at 10:58
@ I KRISHNA
SInce this is a press release by the FLCCC I wouldn’t believe a word of it. They are a bunch of maverick physicians with fringe views – you do have a knack for picking unreliable sources with little to no credibility don’t you? How often have I told you that you have to bone up on your critical thinking skills and your ability to distinguish reliable from unreliable sources on the net? Skepticism is a sine qua non when dealing with the internet and pseudoscience – but you are as gullible as a new born baby. But here you go yet again believing any old rubbish you find as long as it confirms your own views!
They don’t have a shred of respectability or integrity and have been a loose cannon since the start of the pandemic. They have been touting various protocols with no scientific basis all along – e.g. MATH+, for methylprednisolone, ascorbic acid, thiamine, and heparin, plus a statin, zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin, and magnesium. Even if it worked how are you supposed to know which of the ingredients if any was the active one?
They don’t believe in RCTs -“Everyone in medicine will yell and scream that this paper is not a randomized controlled trial,” or RCT, said the third FLCCC leader, Pierre Kory, MD, a critical care physician who worked most recently at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee (more on that below). “We didn’t believe in an RCT. We believe we’re supposed to doctor and use our expertise. If you’ve been doing this for decades, and you trust your assessment of the disease and your knowledge of medicine, it’s OK to doctor.”
So to hell with science and evidence – they just “know” when they’re right! Sounds just like you, Krishna!
The NIH position hasn’t changed. Their last update on the matter was issued on 11th February 2021. What they have said is that there ISN’T ENOUGH EVIDENCE FROM STUDIES TO TELL EITHER WAY WHETHER OR NOT IVERMECTIN IS OF ANY USE IN THE TREATMENT OF COVID-19. IT HASN’T BEEN TESTED IN SUFFICIENT STUDIES. THE DATA SIMPLY ISN’T THERE.
In which case it is irresponsible to recommend it’s use in the treatment of Covid patients outside the case of strictly controlled clinical trials.
What the FLCCC is doing, in their typically underhand, deceptive, flamboyant and ill-judged manner is pretending that ivermectin is now a potential treatment for Covid-19 backed by the NIH – WHEN THAT IS SIMPLY NOT THE CASE.
Their press release even states that this situation “MAY” lead to emergency use authorization by the FDA even though the FDA has already clearly stated that there is insufficient evidence to justify its use in treating Covid.
All the studies that have been done so far have shown a lack of efficacy for treating Covid even in much higher doses than normally used in humans. (x 10 normal dose.) It has been calculated that to achieve viricidal levels in pulmonary tissue x 100 times the normal human dose would need to be given which is likely to be toxic.
Ivermectin is viricidal in a petrie dish – but so hydrochloric acid and a Colt 45 – however neither of these is being touted as a possible cure for Covid either.
This statement by the FLCCC is in line with their previous statements in being misleading, light of science and irresponsible. This is why it is very important to check one’s sources PRIOR to just passing them on to others, especially on to a forum read by many other people.
Can you not see that this is how so much misinformation is spread on social media? Misinformed, gullible idiots jumping on pieces of misinformation and immediately passing it on to multiple others without bothering to check if it is from a reliable source, if it is true, if there could be any mistakes, or if the person disseminating the info could have an ulterior motive.
Just proliferating junk, lies and rank misinformation in the way you do is lazy, uninformed, ignorant and dangerous. It just contributes to the pile of misinformation and junk that already clutters the internet and creates more work for those of us who try to debunk some of this nonsense.
Please try to be at least a little more selective in the link that you spew out at random – you could at least TRY to check if they are likely to be true before you press SEND!