Earlier this month, the Daily Mail reported that four homeopathy doctors had travelled to Liberia hoping to try out remedies including rattlesnake venom.
Above you see two of them: Dr Medha Durge, left, and Dr Ortrud Lindemann, right.
At the time, the paper reported:
The mission was organised by the Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis, an international group dedicated to promoting homeopathy.
A message on its website proclaims the initial visit a success because, it claims, the team's results were so 'impressive' that they were asked to establish a program of homeopathic teaching and treatment at the hospital.
In today's Daily Mail, however, Dr Lindemann claims a World Health Organisation (WHO) official "torpedoed" their efforts:
We were disappointed not to be allowed to treat the Ebola patients as we had intended after we were stopped by the Ministry of Health. It seems that a WHO official objected to what we had planned so we were not allowed to carry out our project.
We presented our project several months ago and had been invited to the hospital to help in the treatment of Ebola patients but then when we arrived we were told not to go near them.
Another of the doctors, Edouard Broussalian, 52, from Geneva, apparently posted then deleted a blog on his website about the trip.
According to the Daily Mail he described the trip as:
A unique opportunity to demonstrate the value of homeopathy. Of course they [their critics] will challenge us as to whether the 'cured patients' were really ill in the first place, but we hope to treat such large numbers that no challenge will be possible. The manufacturers of experimental vaccines will then have to change their opinions.
The Daily Mail's report on the doctors' views is a straight news story, but its angle has caused outrage.
"You know, I'd quite like to kill some people." "Me too. Why don't we champion homeopathy as a treatment for Ebola?" "Excellent." #dailymail
Why on earth is @MailOnline giving this "Homeopathy CAN cure Ebola" dangerous rubbish any coverage? http://t.co/4KI4FT6zEz via @TomChivers
@gallaghereditor Great piece of satire about the homoeopathy cure for Ebola. http://t.co/G7sdeeiRhf
While journalist Tom Chivers has written a blog for the Spectator condemning the piece and homeopathy in general:
For those of you who've forgotten, 'homeopathy' isn't 'herbal medicine', some of which is perfectly effective. Homeopathy is the weird magical belief that you can take a substance (in this case rattlesnake venom), dilute it to the point where there is literally none of it left, and it will cure illnesses – but only if you tap it against a Bible or a horsehair cushion in the process.
It doesn't work, I should add. It doesn't matter how it claims it works if it doesn't work. There have been lots of trials, and there is a very interesting finding, which is that the better the trial is (better: placebo controlled, randomised, large sample size, etc), the more likely it is to find that homeopathy has no benefit whatsoever. The Cochrane Library has done six meta-analyses about homeopathy. It doesn't work. It's a placebo.
Chivers concludes by arguing that while the Daily Mail will only say it's reporting the views of the "quacks", "there is an editorial decision being made to give them publicity", and "if this encourages anyone to seek homeopathic treatment for their disease instead of going to a real doctor, then the Mail must take some responsibility for anyone who dies because of that."
He adds:
I should admit that, if you scroll past the headline, bullet-point standfirst, first four paragraphs and three full-column-width pictures, the piece admits that homeopathy actually doesn't have any evidence for it. But you have to plough through a lot of free publicity for dangerous quacks before you get there. This is a fantastically irresponsible article to publish.
The Daily Mail has yet to comment.