My main issue was that if a deluded few want to pay extra for an insurance policy that covers them for magic then that’s fine but I don’t see why I should have to pay for this as well. Pet Plan got back to me and said that this part of the coverage was “not optional” and “they have no plans to change this”. I replied asking how Pet Plan had come to this position and this was their response; 

Within our customer base there is demand for these types of treatments and therefore, to provide a flexible product which suits all the different policyholder requirements we offer cover for these types of treatments. 

The cover for we provide for these types of treatments is limited with a maximum benefit of £750 per year for all injuries/illnesses, when compared to the veterinary fees benefit which provides £4000, £6000 or £12,000 per year for all injuries/illnesses (depending  on the plan chosen). 

The complementary treatment benefit provides cover for acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine, chiropractic manipulation, osteopathy and hydrotherapy and most of these treatment types have been proven scientifically. 

I understand that with homeopathy the basis and scientific evidence to prove effectiveness is continuously under debate; however, as there is a demand for this type of therapy we provide a limited benefit towards these costs.

Thanks again for your feedback.

This will be my final correspondence on the matter.

Kind regards,

I concede that if there is demand for something then as a business it makes complete sense for them to provide this service. But surely those of us that don’t want to pay extra for coverage we will never use should be able to opt out of this? It is irrelevant how limited this coverage is; any money spent on rubbish is too much. I don’t accept this reasoning with the NHS spending money on homeopathy and I don’t accept it here.

I don’t want to get into the evidence for the various treatments listed above but for them to say that most of them being proven scientifically is pushing it quite a bit. 

Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill but I think if we just let these sorts of treatments to be supported and funded, regardless of how tacitly, then we are just allowing these dangerous practices to continue. All this does is give more legitimacy to nonsense and unproven madcap theories about how the world works.

It was good of Pet Plan to take the time to respond to my questions, I am not a customer only a potential one, and although they took a while to respond and I didn’t get the answers I wanted I am pleased that they engaged with the issue. Perhaps if more people ask for unproven treatments to be removed from their insurance plans, pet or otherwise, then this will be another victory for science based medicine.

Although my family has had cats for years it is always exciting getting your own pet for the first time. We have been reading up on various insurance policies, cat health websites about worms and fleas and all that stuff. What has dissapointed me is the amounts of woo prevalent in the pet world.

Take this website suggesting homeopathic remedies as worm treatment. People can catch worms from animals you know? This is REALLY bad advice.

But what pissed me off more than someone whistling in the office, (Seriously why are you whistling at all let alone in the office? Why, why would you do that? Stop it, stop it now before I rip your lips off) was insurance policies that covered alternative therapies. Why should I be paying for something that is utter nonsense?

I don’t know how many pet owners out there have insurance, if you don’t you really should, or if your policies cover alternative therapy, if they do they really shouldn’t, but for those of you that do have a policy I advise you to check it and is necessary write to your insurer to complain. Perhaps if enough of us do it then they might take notice.

Here is my letter to Pet Plan with hyperlinks added for your reference.    

Dear Pet Plan,

My partner and I have recently adopted two kittens from the Cats Protection Agency and so have been researching possible insurers. It is clear after shopping around that your policy is one of the better ones however I was very disappointed to see that as part of your plan you cover the cost of alternative treatments such as acupuncture and homeopathy. Since ‘alternative treatment’ is often synonymous with placebo or doesn’t work, as a potential customer I am concerned that the cost of your policies may be more expensive as a result of having to cover what is essentially other peoples’ delusions.

The breadth of evidence against these treatments is now extensive; Professor Edzard Ernst, the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, has critisised these treatments publically and often. In the American Journal of Medicine on homeopathy he said;

 ”Homeopathy is among the worst examples of faith-based medicine… These axioms [of homeopathy] are not only out of line with scientific facts but also directly opposed to them. If homeopathy is correct, much of physics, chemistry, and pharmacology must be incorrect… To have an open mind about homeopathy or similarly implausible forms of alternative medicine (eg, Bach flower remedies, spiritual healing, crystal therapy) is therefore not an option.”

These treatments don’t work, that is why they are called alternative treatments and not medicine. This obviously means that alternative treatment programmes are drawn out, costly as a result and ultimately aren’t really doing anything. Inevitably, if the condition is serious enough, claimants eventually have to resort to real medicine. All of this puts the cost of the claim up and subsequently your premiums up.

While I appreciate that this view may not be taken by all, alternative treatment enthusiasts are evidentially wrong and if they wish to pay extra for an insurance policy that caters to their delusions then that is up to them. I do not think it should be part of your standard policy or at the very least there should be a way of opting out of this cover for those of us that prefer to live in the real world. Can you tell me if this is something you are considering?

I look forward to your response,

I will of course keep you updated should they respond.

They claim that water has a memory and so therefore despite a 30C dilution containing not one molecule of active ingredient the water retains the memory of the ingredient and this is from where the remedy gets its potency. The more diluted the more potent. If there is anything wrong with my understanding of this then I invite homoeopathists to correct me in the comments.  

My simple test is this;

1. Take 10 different 30C remedies; Heph Sulph, Pulsatilla, Lycopdium, Arnica, Apis Mel, Argent Nit, Sepia, Thuja, Kali Phos, Kali Bich. (Purchased from your local Boots store of course)

 2. An independent adjudicator should now place the remedies in 10 separate numbered containers being sure to make a record of the numbers to the corresponding remedy. This should be done away from prying eyes.

 3. Another independent adjudicator should now take these containers and pass them to a homeopathic practitioner.

 4. The homeopathic practitioner is free to conduct as many tests as they deem necessary to identify what remedies correspond to what numbered containers.

 5. Should they be able to identify correctly all ten remedies then this would provide some evidence that despite the 30C dilution the remedies still contain some ‘memory’ of the initial active ingredient.

Please Note

While this would not completely convince me that homeopathy worked it would go a little way to proving the fundamental memory premise. While 10 out of 10 may seem a little strict should a similar test be done with 10 traditional medicines, aspirin, paracetamol etc I am confident a chemist would correctly identify 10 out of 10.  

It would be great to hear what simple tests you would devise for homoeopathists to take to show the fundamental science behind their ‘medicine’ is sound. Alternatively I would like to hear from homoeopathists as to what evidence would convince them that homeopathy doesn’t work?

I typed in a number of issues relevant to the scientific and sceptical society to see what Google came up with. I limited my results to what came up on the first page, the first ten results and the sponsored links.

“Vaccinations” – 2 out of 10 search results promoted an anti-vax philosophy. None of the sponsored links did.

“Climate Change” – 1 out of 10 search results promoted a climate change denial philosophy and none of the sponsored links.

“Moon Landing” – 2 out of 10 search results promoted the moon landing hoax although a further 3 made reference to the moon landing conspiracy being debunked or a myth. None of the sponsored links referred to the moon landing hoax at all.  

“Swine Flu Treatment” – 1 out of 10 search results promoted quack treatments (homeopathy and ayurvedic medicine). Another 1 of the sponsored links offered homeopathic remedies for swine flu.

“Homeopathy” – 7 out of 10 search results led to websites that promoted the use of homeopathic treatments. Of the three that didn’t, one was Wikipedia, one was UK Skeptics website and the other was an article by the Daily Mail (yeah shocked me too). All of the sponsored links promoted homeopathic treatments or practitioners.

“Evolution” – none of the results promoted creationalism or intelligent design however all 4 of the sponsored links pointed to a pro-creationalism website.

“9/11” – 1 out of 10 search results promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories. Not including the one Wiki article about conspiracy theories. Only 1 of the sponsored links lead to a conspiracy website.

Obviously this list is by no means comprehensive and clearly bias towards issues that I consider relevant or interesting. It is clear from these initial searches that the situation is far better than it was in 2002 but there are still large concerns over the material being promoted on Google. Particularly in the area of sponsored links, this should not be undermined as uncontrollable or irrelevent, how would you feel if an advert for Creationalism came up in the middle of watching an animal documentary? It is also worrying the amount of material there is promoting quackery. If you were ill informed and wanted to search on google for information about Homeopathic remedies you would do well to sieve through the majority of bunk to find the good advice.

I would mirror Martin, the editor of Lay Science’s, comments on this; this it raises interesting ethical questions about the role of search engines. If you are likely to see homeopathic remedies promoted on Google then “what responsibility – if any – do Google (motto: “Do No Evil”) have for the public health consequences”.

I recently took the time to tune into the BBC Essex Mid Morning programme on which there was a segment about the mystical practice of Reiki. In this segment the Reiki practitioner claimed she could heal animals with Reiki, the presenter said that we all have an electrical field around us and the Reiki practitioner then went onto say that all objects have an electrical field around them and have an ‘energy’. She did not offer any emperical evidence or further information about what this energy is or indeed to support her claims that she could heal animals by waving her hands over the top of them.

I do not feel that a letter of complaint is the correct medium for me to offer the evidence to refute these claims. Suffice to say that there is a wealth of material available online should your researchers had taken the time to read it. A cursory email or call to Sense About Science, (http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/) an independent charitable trust set up promote evidence and scientific reasoning in public discussion, might have provided you with the necessary information with which to responsibly present a segment on alternative ‘medicine’.

As a major news and entertainment outlet the BBC has a responsibility to its listeners to provide accurate information. I considered this segment an advert for spiritualism and an alternative medicine that has been proven time and time again not to work better than a placebo. Your presenter clearly had no intention of questioning this guest sceptically and was more than happy to support her claims and give her a platform on which to advertise her pseudoscience.  

At no point in the segment was it suggested that should you have an animal in need of medical care that you should first consult a vet. I feel that it is incredibly irresponsible of you to imply that going to a Reiki healer is an effective and responsible way of providing treatment for animals.

I would suggest in the future that if you are going to talk about alternative ‘medicine’ for animals or people then you offer your listeners an expert’s advice such as a vet or doctor who is aware of the placebo effect and the post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning for which these treatments exploit as evidence for their claims.

It would be reassuring to hear some sort of concession on your part that this segment was poorly researched and that you will be doing everything in the future to ensure that this does not happen again.

Here is the response written by the Assistant Editor in the absence of the Editor:

I’m sorry you were unhappy with the item we featured about reiki for horses. I’ve now had a chance to listen to the interview.

The feature was a description of an event which took place at a horse sanctuary in Essex.

There was no mention of reiki as a substitute for veterinary medicine, nor was there mention of reiki being the only medical treatment provided for the horses in the horse sanctuary. The guest did say that reiki was “effective,” and also claimed the owner of the sanctuary has seen her vet bills go down.

I am happy that the interview was a straightforward piece about a recent event.

While I am pleased that the Assistant Editor took the time to listen to the segment again, and satisfied with her description of the piece she completely misses the point. Whether the reporting was of an event that took place is irrelevant, my complaint still stands that this was platform for which a pseudoscientific practitioner had to promote her particular brand of woo. Despite not specifically saying that Reiki was a substitute for veterinary medicine I think the implication was there, particularly given that they claimed the owners vets bills had gone down. It is a great shame that stuff like this continues to be broadcast at all and especially when the presenters don’t even bother to ask one sceptical question.

I did not follow up this email but maybe they will remember my complaint and recommendation to contact Sense about Science next time they plan on advertising woo.