This tweet from Richard Wilson brings me the news that in 2007 (yeah OK, old news), 40 out of 63 Lib Dem MPs backed an Early Day Motion to continue the NHS funding of homeopathic hospitals. That is a higher proportion of MPs than both Labour (72 out of 355) and Conservative (88 out of 198), and the Others (6 out of 29).
The list includes Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem Health Spokesperson, and basically all the party's most prominent names, e.g. Lembit Opik, Chris Huhne, Vince Cable and, sigh, Nick Clegg.
How embarrassing. They need to be sat down and given the once over by Evan Harris.
6 comments:
That's crazy! I thought we were the party most in tune with science and evidence.
Figures.
But not as damaging as windmillery or child sex slavery.
I have no idea what you are on about, Neil.
Let's start with "windmillery", as it sounds less libellous. What is it?
There have been plenty of studies into this subject, it's not hard to find information on it, so I regard it as a form of laziness.
This makes them no better than Alan Johnson in his dismissal of Prof. Nutt - they're both examples of politicians not understanding the findings of peer-reviewed studies and opting for their gut instinct over facts.
Hi Duncan - you may find my blog post on science and politics interesting, I stumbled upon a neat website called Skeptical Voter whose wiki will track the performance of all MPs on issues related to science and evidence - might be time to updaet an entry or two...
To be fair, I've spoken to one or two of the MPs concerned about this and off the record they tell me it comes down to electoral expediency rather than in belief in the efficacy of homeopathy - i.e. their constituents find AltMed useful so they find it hard to take a rational stance. Not that this is necessarily better mind you..
They need to be sat down and given the once over by Evan Harris.
Couldn't agree more! I don't see why anyone should consider it "electorally expedient" to support taxpayer funding of a form of medicine that has no accepted scientific basis.
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