Homeopathy in Italy: Homeopaths File Charges, but Court Finds for Science
Wednesday June 21, 2006
It's not just in America that people get upset when favored beliefs are subjected to critical scrutiny. In Italy, recently, the Catania-based Italian Association of Medical Homeopathy brought a lawsuit against the creators of Superquark, a science program which criticized homeopathy as unscientific. They lost - and badly.
In the September/October issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Massimo Polidoro writes:
The case went to court in the autumn of 2001, and it took over three years to be settled. Finally, on May 20, 2004, the court presented a fifty-nine page, highly detailed judgment confirming that homeopathy has no scientific validity. What was said on the show, the judgment states, “falls within the right to fair comment and criticism and cannot in any way be considered offensive or defamatory, as it merely gives an account of a situation which is perfectly true.”
It is the first time that a court has handed down a judgment on this topic, which for years has been at the center of heated debate between the international scientific community and the supporters of homeopathy.
Judge Cinzia Sgro wrote that “Science, in fact, is not a matter of mere categories of opinion. In the scientific field, either something is, or it is not. Either a treatment works, or it doesn’t. And if it works, it is necessary to demonstrate that fact with clear scientific findings backed up by a solid statistical base. Although the international scientific community has always requested such scientific evidence from homeopathic medicine, it has never received attestation of its validity. It is completely devoid of any such foundation, remaining substantially an ‘emotional medicine.’”
Homeopathy is very popular in Italy and I’m not sure if this will have any long-term impact on this, but I have my doubts. Even when confronted with incontrovertible facts, it’s common for people to simply refuse to accept that they might have been wrong about something.
Quick Poll: Are you an atheist who uses alternative medicine?
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Comments
The poll is too generic, so I answered Yes, it works for me. I consider stuff like meditation or aromatherapy or massage alternative medicine, after all
Of course, I think it’s more accurate to say that placebos work for me.